It is my honour to be able to pay tribute to John Angus, our friend ‘Curly’, who sadly passed away on November 14th 2021. John was a true rugby man who had a song and joke for every occasion and quite often you would find yourself on the receiving end of one of his pranks. One of my first memories of meeting John was on the Tring tour to the Isle of Man in 2002, I had just ordered a round at the bar and behind me in a loud voice I heard the call of ‘Where’s the peg?’ At this stage I found a clothes peg hanging off my jacket and I turned around to be greeted by Curly grinning from ear to ear. ‘See off your pint Matty!’ The ultimate prankster is an understatement.

A fantastic story that I recently heard was that a comedian attended the rugby club one evening and was being annoyed by John who kept finishing his punchlines – no doubt with a grin on his face. The comedian was so annoyed that he offered John the microphone and asked him if he could do better. John took the microphone and within ten minutes had both the comedian and the audience rolling around with laughter.

There were always countless games, pranks and songs from Curly and nearly every person you speak to at the club recalls either being covered in beer or hit on the head with a spoon or having been challenged to a game of leg wrestling - and losing! Even if you were the victim, you couldn’t help but laugh and quite often you would find yourself left with an aching jaw having laughed so hard with Curly.

But the true measure of the man lay in his devotion to his wife Lisa, son Will and daughter Lucy. Listening to Will’s brilliant eulogy at John’s funeral he was also an incredibly devoted grandfather. In life sometimes things are clear, and John was fortunate enough to be married to his soul mate and spent time with Lisa ballroom dancing which I know he loved. Quite often, at rugby club dinners, he would spin my wife around the dance floor all the time grinning from ear to ear.

There are not enough words on a page to aptly sum up John for he was truly one in a million and so I close with his sound life advice:

‘You can get away with just about anything if you smile’.

Matt Adams